Summary of Unix Commands

Here is a list of the Unix commands you should know how to use for this course. You should know what the basic options are to each of these commands and get used to piping the output from one into the input of the next.

man documentation
ls list files and directories
cd change working directory
pwd print working directory
du print the disk space used by files and directories
df display status of disk space on a filesystem
chmod change file permissions
cp cp files or directories
mv move files or directories
rm remove files
mkdir create directories
rmdir remove empty directories
diff show the differences between the contents of two files
grep print lines matching a pattern
sort sort lines
uniq remove duplicates from a sorted list
more page through a text file
less page through a text file
cat concatenate and display files
head display first few lines of a file
tail display last few lines of a file
wc count lines words and characters of a file
compress, uncompress compress or uncompress files
gzip, gunzip compress or uncompress files
ps display status of running processes
top display status of running processes
nice set the priority level of a command.
lpr print file to a printer
lpq query the status of the printer queue
lprm remove a job from the printer queue
which find the path to a program
who who is on the computer
finger display information about users
w display activity of logged-in users
date display date and time
passwd change login password
tar archive files


Last modified: Tue Sep 11 18:22:52 EDT 2001